New Windsor nanotech firm sells to world market

NEW WINDSOR — Most of Torr International's thin film machines look like scuba gear from the 1950s movie "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

Jessica DiNapoli

NEW WINDSOR — Most of Torr International's thin film machines look like scuba gear from the 1950s movie "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

But no one at Torr International is going diving in the Quassaick Creek, the closest body of water to the unassuming office building the nanotechnology company occupies.

Torr manufactures and sells its high-end stainless steel machines to companies like IBM, Xerox and 3M, and to companies and universities across the world. The machines' specialty guns "sputter" material in a vacuum chamber to create films a fraction of the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Microscopically thin films are used for everything from tinting on eyeglass lenses to gold coatings on jewelry, said company President Masud Naraghi, who left his native Iran after the 1979 revolution and founded Torr in the early 1990s.

The company's machines are used in the research and development divisions of large corporations and specialized university laboratories.

Saudi Aramco, one of the world's largest petrochemical companies, is using a sputtering machine from Torr to find new ways to access oil deposits in soil, said Michael Droney, Torr's project manager and designer. Pennsylvania State University, working with the Department of Homeland Security, used a Torr machine to study three-dimensional fingerprints, Droney said.

The machines are also used for research and development of solar panels, he said.

Torr is now finishing its biggest project ever, a $2 million machine for a metallurgy research center in Romania, Naraghi said. Romanian scientists plan to visit Torr's Columbus Street headquarters in the next few weeks to learn to use it.

Torr's business has become increasingly international during the past four years. The company once did 90 percent of its business in the United States, but now finds that percentage of its business in countries including Israel, Turkey and Jordan, Naraghi said.

He attributed the international focus to a weaker dollar, which makes American-made products cheaper abroad.

Torr's sales have grown about 20 percent per year, because scientists continually discover new applications for nanotechnology, creating more demand for thin film, Naraghi said.

Seeking to expand, Torr last year bought an adjacent building and is spending $300,000 renovating it. Machinery and sales staff have already moved in, Naraghi said.

He said the structure, built in the 1800s, has housed a bank, grocery store and antiques shop — but never a nanotech company.